Eliminating or minimizing incorrectly aimed bounce notifications is a whole lot more about proper system design and about mail admins with a clue and a care than it is about the SMTP protocol, other then the fact that the protocol specification requires mail to not be thrown away by an MTA without proper notification for trivial reasons.
As these trivial reasons include the machine crashing or running out of disk space, they most certainly also include "my filter thinks it is spam" or "the downstream server says the user is unknown".
I certainly hope they dont change that part of the specification.
And how do you stop spammers from just using everybody elses key?
Oh, there needs to be a way to restrict how keys are used.
Maybe we can do that by domain name, to show which domain names can use which keys?
Or maybe we can do it by IP addresses to show which ip addresses are authorized to send email with that key?
I know! We will use DNS for that.
Congratulations, you have reinvented spf, senderid, domainkeys -- but with a whole lot more of intrusiveness, annoyance and lead bricks to guarantee it never gets off the runway.
Because of users who are lazy and refuse to expend a couple units of thinkpower, instead taking the easy approach and dumping their problem onto the computer guy's lap.
This is doubly hard because most professional who I have met actually enjoy helping people and will take on more than would normally be expected -- taking calls while on hold, while hanging around on conference call, while writing that complicated shell script....and then is rewarding by the users unwillingless to cooperate.
Toss on the complete inability of proper estimation of the effort involved and constantly incorrect estimates, even by people who should know better.
Very frustrating. The natural remedy for frustration is to take it out on the cause.
CG: Download this and click that. IU: Should I save it or run it? CG: What do you think will allow you to achieve the objective of following instrctions, midgetbrain?
If it actually cost a monetary unit for every minute the user consumed of the computer guys time and attention, thing would be very different.
Here is further theory.
IT people are naturally optimistic, because cynicism would decree that nothing would ever work properly in a computer system -- after all billions of things need to go right every second in order for proper functioning to occur. This should be considered the leading reason why all IT estimates are so way off.
Optimism and Idealism go hand in hand. Users who are perceived as destroying idealism, by producing problems where none ought to exist are the direct cause for additional frustration.
Name an instance Apple choice the less restrictive route when it meant less gain for themselves.
Open sourcing OSX components? Nope, they are working that in reverse. Suing bloggers? Yep. Restrictive EULAS? Yep. Closing interfaces? Yep. Promoting DRM? Yep. Infringing trademarks? Yep. Contributing to FOSS? Doesnt compare to Sun or IBM. Even Microsoft contributed to FOSS.
And the list goes on. Its not neccessary to list them. Its as if apple fans and apologies work with blinders on. Simply pathetic.
Here is a simple exercise.
Every news article about apple, do a s/Apple/Microsoft/g and s/Steve Jobs/Steve Ballmer/g then read it. Only dishonesty would allow you to say that your reactions would be the same.
Kudos. The satellite point is one I have touted for quite some time. We are in 100% agreement. Those laws are the forbearers of what we have now.
An analogy I use goes like this:
Suppose I built a company that sold news to subscribers only, delivered by a chinese newspeaker who pedaled by with a megaphone. Is it not absurd to outlaw all chinese speakers and translators so that my revenue stream is not impacted? That would be good for me, but bad for the rest of the world.
The only difference between sound waves and satellite radio waves is one of frequency. It is equaly as absurd and unjust to outlaw receivers on their property from doing as they wish.
"undocumented blob of ever changing ugly interfaces that requires breaking the license if you want to add a closed source driver."
What you are complaining about is a feature not a bug.
Clearly they want YOU to stop violating their license.
Linux could use some more stable software api's simply because of the amount of GPL/FOSS modules out there that are not in the tree and wont land up there for some time if ever for variety of reasons.
However when it comes to binary api, the thinking is that the lack of one is a feature not a bug, in that it makes more difficult the job of people who just want to leach by doing binary drivers.
People dont understand voting in america. The concept is not to vote for whom you want in office, but to vote in a manner that defeats whom you dont want in office.
Eventually, the people getting elected will learn how to not get voted out, and that would be by keeping their constiuents happy enough to NOT choose to vote for someone other than them.
Now the longevity of the term of office and term limits limits the effectiveness of doing this, but it is the only way.
Punish the politician - by voting against them.
Otherwise, they figure they dont have to be good, they just have to be not worse than anyone else.
In this day and age, goverment terms are probably way longer than they need to be.
Enough of this bull. People who cant write email that others can understand are the same ones who cant write anything that anyone can understand. People who cant understand email written by intelligent folk needs to understand the problem is them and their expectation that reading every fifth word of the message will somehow transmit the meaning through their synaptics.
Sometime you actualy have to read a sentence twice. Its not the end of the world. Just do it.
And I much prefer sending email to phone conversations. Anyone who.....
- doesnt want to deal with end user crap - doesnt want to take his headphone off every five minutes - multitasks - prefers to manage their own time - likes to triage incoming issues and assign priorites - wants to work on the issues in their own fashion - notices that nothing usefull ever comes out of phone call that could not have been written as a few lines in an email - Is not afraid that people will actually have a record of what they said - wishes that all their phone calls were call screened - enjoys being able to ignore things that are non-respondable to, for any variety of reasons.... prefers email to phone calls.
C'mon. Phone calls are the equivalent of realtime single threaded cooperative multitasking. Who wants to do real time when you can do soft time preemptive multitasking scheduling?
And conference calls! Complete and utter waste time. Best idea of this whole story and associated comments was to setup a nntp server and use newsgroups.
All systems that encourage skilled people who would tend to be a net gain to the local economy and culture to come and STAY are good.
All systems that encourage skilled or semi skilled people who tend to be a net loss to the local economy to come, work cheap, send money back home, and LEAVE are bad.
I want them to come but I dont want them to go back. I think thats shortsighted, pumping money and talent out of the {local|city|state|national} economy and diluting it over the global one.
Lets face it, saying put them into the kernel isnt good enough for two reasons
1 - The kernel team usually makes it fairly difficult to get them in
2 - Users arent neccessarily happy about their kernel getting massive updates in a "stable" series
In short, it would be nice, but its not realistic.
Unfortunately, this means that tons of open soure kernel modules are always lagging behind the released kernel, and the effort involved in maintaining it (for the developer) and installing/using it (for the end user) is much larger than it should be.
Doing anything to lengthen the time that external modules could be expected to work would be a Very Good idea.
All of us, developers, sysadmins, users have gone through the
upgrade my kernel recompile alll my non included open source modules see which ones break try to update them recompile....
Its a real pain and something should be done to cushion it.
Suppose an organization made it a business objective to
* reward those who find GPL or other copyleft violations
* sign up copyright holders for limited power of attorney to handle said violations
* negotiate with the violater
* secure settlements monies
* pay themselves, the copyright holder, the finder, A portion to FOSS organizations......
There is a distinct possibility that lots of commercial code companies are thumbing their noses at copyleft licensing because they are under the impression that its to much work and to little return for those commie open sourcer to pursue them, people like Harold Welte for example (I dont consider him a commie open sourcer [well he might be, but thats not relevant to me]).
Sure the FSF pursues cases also. However their objective is to work with the company with their primary objective compliance with the license. The stated positions do not include obtaining any settlement money.
Times are achanging and for some people out there the gentle FSF approach is not what is called for.
Picture this: START HERE { different opening scenarios:
CIO: Three month deadline
Eng: We can only do this if we rip off X Y Z codebases, GPL'd
OR
CIO: release our new linksys-like product
Eng: comply with GPL?
CIO: and help our competitors?
Eng: But we are violating the license!
}
CIO: And worse that happens?
Eng: We get enjoined or we release under GPL, if somebody comes after us
CIO: Whose likely to come after us?
Eng: FSF
CIO: Them? They will simply ask us to GPL, at which time we probably made our millions already. Go ahead, use the code.
Eng: People like Harold Welte?
CIO: Costs them more relative to their budget to pursue us than for us to defend. Eventually they will get tired and go away.
STOP HERE
An organization that used well publicised guidlines for how they approach violaters and that operated with a degree of transparency to the community would easily be able to obtain neccessary support -- that being the authorization to pursue violation by copyright holders.
I dont think any existing org should take on such a charter -- its a much to risky proposition. A new one that live or die on their own merits would be the way to go.
"
This is, strictly speaking, terrorism: harming innnocent people as a way to pressure some central authority into doing what you want
"
-the harm is inflicted, often intentionaly, by those who CHOOSE to use a blocklist
-Innocent is at best debatable
"
As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam. Why? Because the guys at the SBL want to pressure Yahoo, where paulgraham.com is hosted, to delete the site of a company they believe is spamming.
"
I was under the distinct impression that the SBL is an IP blocklist. And I see absolutely no evidence here of motive. Merely his say so.
First, at no time in the last ten years has Unix-flavored systems done so well against Microsoft. Servers certainly so, but even the desktop. Unix is the one gaining ground. Of Unix, it is the free unixen which are gaining the most.
From about 1995-2001 Microsoft believed it would effect a clean sweep of the server scene. We all know that mostly thanks to Gnu/Linux that has not happened and eventually its expected that it will be Linux that sweeps microsoft from the server scene.
Second, its easy to bitch and moan about how everybody doesnt do the same thing at the same time. Well thats the part about freedom. People are free do to as they wish, and they will do so.
This is actually a strength because in the FOSS world more often than not everybody benefits from "There is more than one way to it". And thats because FOSS has something that was missing from the Unix wars of the 80s-90s. Choice, Freedom and Source Code.
From change comes instability but from instability brought by change comes innovation and better technology.
While there are certainly many examples one can bring about fractionary elements in FOSS communities, one forgets that this is a community that exists due to choice. And that is its strength.
Linux distributions are largely as compatible with eachother as they have been for the past ten years. As some of their paths diverge, others merge back together. As it stands there are only five major flavors of distributions.
Slackware Redhat and derivatives Debian and derivatives LFS Gentoo
By the time world desktop domination is well underway, the users of the system will generally care little about underlying system differences and will instead have much more issues with KDE and GNOME along with others.
However the degree that these systems work with eachother and the ability to have them on almost any system, all at the same time, strongly suggest that this too will be a strength and not a weakness.
Third, if you read the rant and all similar to it you will notice one thing. All problems discussed generally only seem insurmountable to proprietary software shops. Especialy notice the Adobe arguments.
There happens to be no consensus on whether allowing these folks to treat FOSS platforms as a playground for their proprietary software is good for FOSS. Most RMS's adherents would gladly see them stick to their natural environment, a proprietary OS.
In other words: Who needs them. We need FOSS replacements instead. Those who want proprietary, please stick to proprietary and dont moan and groan.
These people would answer that instead of calling for unity so that proprietary software vendors can target the FOSS platform, we should call for unity so that FOSS developers can target the FOSS platform. And for this, fragmentation is largely an understood and solvable problem. Indeed most FOSS projects have them well solved.
Dont be surprised when the proprietary windows world resolves itself to about four major software vendors with the lion share of their markets. Proprietary Windows software is not a safe market to be in.
That is not what we want happening on FOSS operating systems.
In simple conclusion.
The issue comes back to those who want Binary Compatibility at all costs and those who care only about source compatibility.
FOSS folk generally feel that binary compatibility is nice and good but only source code compatibility/portability is critically important.
Never forget that Unix was originally (re)designed ONLY for source compatibility.
The longer the laughing continues in redmond, the better it will be for the rest of us.
According to secunia NT4, XP Pro, Win2k, Win2k3 ALL have unpatched vulns. SLES9 RHES3 have 0.
And check this out. Debian Linux 3 (woody) "Currently, 3 out of 488 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."
Everybody can patch better than microsoft it seems. Even a 3 year old distro with almost every piece of software under the sun.
And they dont make you wait up to a month for the patches either. And the patches are open source. And you could have patched the software yourself even earlier then your vendor. Try doing that with MS junk. And all these numbers dont take into account the high probability that more open source bugs are uncovered quicker than closed source counterparts.
You dont really expect us to believe that MS code quality is so much higher than FOSS do you? Tell it to Coverity.
That means that if they code quality is about equal, there are X more UNKNOWN vulns out there for closed source wincrap than for FOSS. Unknown to you and I, but possibly well known to many of the nasties out there and likely MS as well.
The simple conclusion is that not only does open source have a much higher potential for security, it actually has higher security.
This is the rule of thumb. Whatever MS says about its linux should be deemed as credible as what Mr. Iraqi information Minister had to say.
In fact they should just shut up. Let me hear from coverity about studies done on MS code before I hear any more patch number quotes.
This play for suspensefull anticipiation is becoming increasingly aggravating and annoyingly predictable.
Only a SUN junkie could possibly sit through any more of this crap.
They are like a circus magician...always trying to tease you about whats coming next, never up front how they do their tricks and predictably unpredictable.
While this makes for good entertainment, its impossible to believe a thing they say and all the furor they keep trying to provoke is getting old really fast. All these antics of theirs are really lame and annoying.
Contrast IBM and SUN.
IBM: Here are 500 patents and their terms.
SUN: Day 1: There will be something, maybe Patents SUN: Day 2: 1500 Patents! SUN: Day 3: For Open Source SUN: Day 4: Only Our Open Source SUN: Day 5: We are still thinking of terms. SUN: Day 6: Real Soon Now
Who respects whom?
SUN is the ultimate karma whore.
JUST ONCE I would like to see SUN make an announcement that requires no follow up. None of this "stay tuned business". Enough is Enough. All sun stories now get blacklisted.
So SUN, to you I say: SHUT UP and Deliver. Yes that means you too Mr. Ponytail Schwartz.
Do they think we are retarded and statements of "Shiny Object....Shiny Object" will keep our attention forever?
Are there any normal people at SUN who are not mortified anytime their Fearless Leaders play their stupid games?
Unfortunately, you are almost definitely wrong. Private modification of software, private copies of software and even running software (copying it to RAM) may come under copyright's legal purview.
Especialy where private means more than just myself.
The difference between OSI and FSF is that FSF invokes morality.
This is the same difference as those who say "People should be free because then their economy will prosper" and those who say "People should be free because we are all equal and they have a god given right to it".
Without RMS kook-aid there would be no collection of "open source" success stories outside of BSD and apache and the OSI would not exist. Perhaps you should place an order for a jar or two of that.
Everyone knows that "Open Source" is expressly designed to gloss over Stallman's philosophy that drives him on his mission to assure software users have the freedoms he believes they should.
He has proven himself uncorruptable in this regard. Who else has?
Yes, we all know that people who carry the flag of Open Source are all aware of the neccessary politics involved. Those who claimed otherwise started changing their tunes real quick SCO.
In short, BSD is the epitome of open source. All copyleft is in truth based strictly on a belief and desire in software freedom such as that expressed by RMS.
RMS is therefore the father of Free Software, Copyleft which helps perpetuate it, and the leader of those who will not compromise on this stance.
What is OSI? It is a way to show companies how to mix in some copyleft licensing to bsd open source licensing so that they can now create a semi-open commons which will benefit them no less than their competitors, while still giving them a product they can sell at a nice margin.
Sun and others are still tinkering with the exact recipe.
Again the point is made that OSI exist only because of RMS's innovations driven by his moral stance.
In plain speaking, for many who believe in Free Software, this translates to supping with the enemy. Showing us the tidbits you collect from their tables during the meal, while nice and good does not change that.
OSI does do many other things such as lobbying and advocacy. However, the source is always examined in this case, and due to OSI's corporate ties, one can easily determine that there is perceived taint here.
In terms of trust, everybody knows where they would place that first.
And in fact, since it is bad for just about everybody except microsoft's accounting department, if DHS were really doing their job, they would sue microsoft to enjoin them from a path that would render huge amounts of windows machines in the USA vulnerable to "cyber-terrorism", not to mention the DDOS capability of the internationaly pwned windows machines.
I expect the FBI should be interested also. Would make it impossible for them to trace "bad guys".
Not to mention the justice department may have some issues with the inevitable results.
Expect "my computer was pwned!" defense to be quite common as people plead to the lesser charge of running windows unlicensed instead of hosting gigs of warez.
Expect corporate networks to refuse access from unlicensed copies also "think NAC".
Because having even more unpatched zombie windoze machines will be even worse for the net, microsoft's network, microsoft's reputation, AND microsoft's customers.
Its like the neighbor who refuses to clean the trash from his sidewalk, since "he didnt put it there". Its bad neighborly and expect to see them get their reputation further trashed.
Frankly, I suspect that Microsoft couldnt fix their reputation even if they tried, of which no evidence has been seen, let alone by what they are doing now.
I think that service providers should start denying all internet access to "pirated" windows machines, because pretty soon, by definition they will be pwned.
Microsoft would be very gratefull to these ISP's.
I expect china to also outlaw windows or "pirated" copies.
And we will start finding out just how many people used "pirated" versions of windows when we start measuring web site statistics for OS. Expect GNU/linux and mac osx to make heavy inroads in the next few years should things play out like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Eliminating or minimizing incorrectly aimed bounce notifications is a whole lot more about proper system design and about mail admins with a clue and a care than it is about the SMTP protocol, other then the fact that the protocol specification requires mail to not be thrown away by an MTA without proper notification for trivial reasons.
As these trivial reasons include the machine crashing or running out of disk space, they most certainly also include "my filter thinks it is spam" or "the downstream server says the user is unknown".
I certainly hope they dont change that part of the specification.
And how do you stop spammers from just using everybody elses key?
Oh, there needs to be a way to restrict how keys are used.
Maybe we can do that by domain name, to show which domain names can use which keys?
Or maybe we can do it by IP addresses to show which ip addresses are authorized to send email with that key?
I know! We will use DNS for that.
Congratulations, you have reinvented spf, senderid, domainkeys -- but with a whole lot more of intrusiveness, annoyance and lead bricks to guarantee it never gets off the runway.
Because of users who are lazy and refuse to expend a couple units of thinkpower, instead taking the easy approach and dumping their problem onto the computer guy's lap.
This is doubly hard because most professional who I have met actually enjoy helping people and will take on more than would normally be expected -- taking calls while on hold, while hanging around on conference call, while writing that complicated shell script....and then is rewarding by the users unwillingless to cooperate.
Toss on the complete inability of proper estimation of the effort involved and constantly incorrect estimates, even by people who should know better.
Very frustrating. The natural remedy for frustration is to take it out on the cause.
CG: Download this and click that.
IU: Should I save it or run it?
CG: What do you think will allow you to achieve the objective of following instrctions, midgetbrain?
If it actually cost a monetary unit for every minute the user consumed of the computer guys time and attention, thing would be very different.
Here is further theory.
IT people are naturally optimistic, because cynicism would decree that nothing would ever work properly in a computer system -- after all billions of things need to go right every second in order for proper functioning to occur. This should be considered the leading reason why all IT estimates are so way off.
Optimism and Idealism go hand in hand. Users who are perceived as destroying idealism, by producing problems where none ought to exist are the direct cause for additional frustration.
Lets see.
Name an instance Apple choice the less restrictive route when it meant less gain for themselves.
Open sourcing OSX components? Nope, they are working that in reverse.
Suing bloggers? Yep.
Restrictive EULAS? Yep.
Closing interfaces? Yep.
Promoting DRM? Yep.
Infringing trademarks? Yep.
Contributing to FOSS? Doesnt compare to Sun or IBM. Even Microsoft contributed to FOSS.
And the list goes on. Its not neccessary to list them. Its as if apple fans and apologies work with blinders on. Simply pathetic.
Here is a simple exercise.
Every news article about apple, do a s/Apple/Microsoft/g and s/Steve Jobs/Steve Ballmer/g then read it. Only dishonesty would allow you to say that your reactions would be the same.
Kudos. The satellite point is one I have touted for quite some time. We are in 100% agreement. Those laws are the forbearers of what we have now.
An analogy I use goes like this:
Suppose I built a company that sold news to subscribers only, delivered by a chinese newspeaker who pedaled by with a megaphone. Is it not absurd to outlaw all chinese speakers and translators so that my revenue stream is not impacted? That would be good for me, but bad for the rest of the world.
The only difference between sound waves and satellite radio waves is one of frequency. It is equaly as absurd and unjust to outlaw receivers on their property from doing as they wish.
I am sick of all the apple apologists fanbois.
Apple is not a nice company. They can and would be far worse than micrsoft if the RIAA whenever or wherever they could get away with it.
"undocumented blob of ever changing ugly interfaces that requires breaking the license if you want to add a closed source driver." What you are complaining about is a feature not a bug. Clearly they want YOU to stop violating their license.
Linux could use some more stable software api's simply because of the amount of GPL/FOSS modules out there that are not in the tree and wont land up there for some time if ever for variety of reasons.
However when it comes to binary api, the thinking is that the lack of one is a feature not a bug, in that it makes more difficult the job of people who just want to leach by doing binary drivers.
People dont understand voting in america. The concept is not to vote for whom you want in office, but to vote in a manner that defeats whom you dont want in office.
Eventually, the people getting elected will learn how to not get voted out, and that would be by keeping their constiuents happy enough to NOT choose to vote for someone other than them.
Now the longevity of the term of office and term limits limits the effectiveness of doing this, but it is the only way.
Punish the politician - by voting against them.
Otherwise, they figure they dont have to be good, they just have to be not worse than anyone else.
In this day and age, goverment terms are probably way longer than they need to be.
Enough of this bull. People who cant write email that others can understand are the same ones who cant write anything that anyone can understand. People who cant understand email written by intelligent folk needs to understand the problem is them and their expectation that reading every fifth word of the message will somehow transmit the meaning through their synaptics.
.... prefers email to phone calls.
Sometime you actualy have to read a sentence twice. Its not the end of the world. Just do it.
And I much prefer sending email to phone conversations. Anyone who.....
- doesnt want to deal with end user crap
- doesnt want to take his headphone off every five minutes
- multitasks
- prefers to manage their own time
- likes to triage incoming issues and assign priorites
- wants to work on the issues in their own fashion
- notices that nothing usefull ever comes out of phone call that could not have been written as a few lines in an email
- Is not afraid that people will actually have a record of what they said
- wishes that all their phone calls were call screened
- enjoys being able to ignore things that are non-respondable to, for any variety of reasons
C'mon. Phone calls are the equivalent of realtime single threaded cooperative multitasking. Who wants to do real time when you can do soft time preemptive multitasking scheduling?
And conference calls! Complete and utter waste time. Best idea of this whole story and associated comments was to setup a nntp server and use newsgroups.
It seems pretty straightforward to me.
All systems that encourage skilled people who would tend to be a net gain to the local economy and culture to come and STAY are good.
All systems that encourage skilled or semi skilled people who tend to be a net loss to the local economy to come, work cheap, send money back home, and LEAVE are bad.
I want them to come but I dont want them to go back. I think thats shortsighted, pumping money and talent out of the {local|city|state|national} economy and diluting it over the global one.
The actual energy in use is known as gravity.
As you did not have to lift the water to X height, the energy released by gravity pulling the water down to Y height is free for the taking.
Lets face it, saying put them into the kernel isnt good enough for two reasons
....
1 - The kernel team usually makes it fairly difficult to get them in
2 - Users arent neccessarily happy about their kernel getting massive updates in a "stable" series
In short, it would be nice, but its not realistic.
Unfortunately, this means that tons of open soure kernel modules are always lagging behind the released kernel, and the effort involved in maintaining it (for the developer) and installing/using it (for the end user) is much larger than it should be.
Doing anything to lengthen the time that external modules could be expected to work would be a Very Good idea.
All of us, developers, sysadmins, users have gone through the
upgrade my kernel
recompile alll my non included open source modules
see which ones break
try to update them
recompile
Its a real pain and something should be done to cushion it.
Suppose an organization made it a business objective to
* reward those who find GPL or other copyleft violations
* sign up copyright holders for limited power of attorney to handle said violations
* negotiate with the violater
* secure settlements monies
* pay themselves, the copyright holder, the finder, A portion to FOSS organizations......
There is a distinct possibility that lots of commercial code companies are thumbing their noses at copyleft licensing because they are under the impression that its to much work and to little return for those commie open sourcer to pursue them, people like Harold Welte for example (I dont consider him a commie open sourcer [well he might be, but thats not relevant to me]).
Sure the FSF pursues cases also. However their objective is to work with the company with their primary objective compliance with the license. The stated positions do not include obtaining any settlement money.
Times are achanging and for some people out there the gentle FSF approach is not what is called for.
Picture this:
START HERE
{
different opening scenarios:
CIO: Three month deadline
Eng: We can only do this if we rip off X Y Z codebases, GPL'd
OR
CIO: release our new linksys-like product
Eng: comply with GPL?
CIO: and help our competitors?
Eng: But we are violating the license!
}
CIO: And worse that happens?
Eng: We get enjoined or we release under GPL, if somebody comes after us
CIO: Whose likely to come after us?
Eng: FSF
CIO: Them? They will simply ask us to GPL, at which time we probably made our millions already. Go ahead, use the code.
Eng: People like Harold Welte?
CIO: Costs them more relative to their budget to pursue us than for us to defend. Eventually they will get tired and go away.
STOP HERE
An organization that used well publicised guidlines for how they approach violaters and that operated with a degree of transparency to the community would easily be able to obtain neccessary support -- that being the authorization to pursue violation by copyright holders.
I dont think any existing org should take on such a charter -- its a much to risky proposition. A new one that live or die on their own merits would be the way to go.
Instead they make women work and kill children
" This is, strictly speaking, terrorism: harming innnocent people as a way to pressure some central authority into doing what you want " -the harm is inflicted, often intentionaly, by those who CHOOSE to use a blocklist -Innocent is at best debatable " As of this writing, any filter relying on the SBL is now marking email with the url "paulgraham.com" as spam. Why? Because the guys at the SBL want to pressure Yahoo, where paulgraham.com is hosted, to delete the site of a company they believe is spamming. " I was under the distinct impression that the SBL is an IP blocklist. And I see absolutely no evidence here of motive. Merely his say so.
Parent really meant to say wrt to MS attitude concerning security and stability.
"and now it has bitten YOU on the ass"
You are correct, they are still doing fine, though arguably not as fine as they could be.
First, at no time in the last ten years has Unix-flavored systems done so well against Microsoft. Servers certainly so, but even the desktop. Unix is the one gaining ground. Of Unix, it is the free unixen which are gaining the most.
From about 1995-2001 Microsoft believed it would effect a clean sweep of the server scene. We all know that mostly thanks to Gnu/Linux that has not happened and eventually its expected that it will be Linux that sweeps microsoft from the server scene.
Second, its easy to bitch and moan about how everybody doesnt do the same thing at the same time. Well thats the part about freedom. People are free do to as they wish, and they will do so.
This is actually a strength because in the FOSS world more often than not everybody benefits from "There is more than one way to it". And thats because FOSS has something that was missing from the Unix wars of the 80s-90s. Choice, Freedom and Source Code.
From change comes instability but from instability brought by change comes innovation and better technology.
While there are certainly many examples one can bring about fractionary elements in FOSS communities, one forgets that this is a community that exists due to choice. And that is its strength.
Linux distributions are largely as compatible with eachother as they have been for the past ten years. As some of their paths diverge, others merge back together. As it stands there are only five major flavors of distributions.
Slackware
Redhat and derivatives
Debian and derivatives
LFS
Gentoo
By the time world desktop domination is well underway, the users of the system will generally care little about underlying system differences and will instead have much more issues with KDE and GNOME along with others.
However the degree that these systems work with eachother and the ability to have them on almost any system, all at the same time, strongly suggest that this too will be a strength and not a weakness.
Third, if you read the rant and all similar to it you will notice one thing. All problems discussed generally only seem insurmountable to proprietary software shops. Especialy notice the Adobe arguments.
There happens to be no consensus on whether allowing these folks to treat FOSS platforms as a playground for their proprietary software is good for FOSS. Most RMS's adherents would gladly see them stick to their natural environment, a proprietary OS.
In other words: Who needs them. We need FOSS replacements instead. Those who want proprietary, please stick to proprietary and dont moan and groan.
These people would answer that instead of calling for unity so that proprietary software vendors can target the FOSS platform, we should call for unity so that FOSS developers can target the FOSS platform. And for this, fragmentation is largely an understood and solvable problem. Indeed most FOSS projects have them well solved.
Dont be surprised when the proprietary windows world resolves itself to about four major software vendors with the lion share of their markets. Proprietary Windows software is not a safe market to be in.
That is not what we want happening on FOSS operating systems.
In simple conclusion.
The issue comes back to those who want Binary Compatibility at all costs and those who care only about source compatibility.
FOSS folk generally feel that binary compatibility is nice and good but only source code compatibility/portability is critically important.
Never forget that Unix was originally (re)designed ONLY for source compatibility.
The longer the laughing continues in redmond, the better it will be for the rest of us.
Happens to be you are wrong.
With top notch admin on both systems you are still far more likely to get nailed on windows than linux.
Just repeat above statement but substitute openbsd for linux and now the entire premise of your post looks ridiculous.
Software development methodology makes all the difference, all else being equal. Including admin expertise.
All admins know this. A sows ear only go so far in creating silk purses.
According to secunia NT4, XP Pro, Win2k, Win2k3 ALL have unpatched vulns. SLES9 RHES3 have 0.
And check this out. Debian Linux 3 (woody)
"Currently, 3 out of 488 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database."
Everybody can patch better than microsoft it seems. Even a 3 year old distro with almost every piece of software under the sun.
And they dont make you wait up to a month for the patches either. And the patches are open source. And you could have patched the software yourself even earlier then your vendor. Try doing that with MS junk. And all these numbers dont take into account the high probability that more open source bugs are uncovered quicker than closed source counterparts.
You dont really expect us to believe that MS code quality is so much higher than FOSS do you? Tell it to Coverity.
That means that if they code quality is about equal, there are X more UNKNOWN vulns out there for closed source wincrap than for FOSS. Unknown to you and I, but possibly well known to many of the nasties out there and likely MS as well.
The simple conclusion is that not only does open source have a much higher potential for security, it actually has higher security.
This is the rule of thumb. Whatever MS says about its linux should be deemed as credible as what Mr. Iraqi information Minister had to say.
In fact they should just shut up. Let me hear from coverity about studies done on MS code before I hear any more patch number quotes.
This play for suspensefull anticipiation is becoming increasingly aggravating and annoyingly predictable.
Only a SUN junkie could possibly sit through any more of this crap.
They are like a circus magician...always trying to tease you about whats coming next, never up front how they do their tricks and predictably unpredictable.
While this makes for good entertainment, its impossible to believe a thing they say and all the furor they keep trying to provoke is getting old really fast. All these antics of theirs are really lame and annoying.
Contrast IBM and SUN.
IBM: Here are 500 patents and their terms.
SUN: Day 1: There will be something, maybe Patents
SUN: Day 2: 1500 Patents!
SUN: Day 3: For Open Source
SUN: Day 4: Only Our Open Source
SUN: Day 5: We are still thinking of terms.
SUN: Day 6: Real Soon Now
Who respects whom?
SUN is the ultimate karma whore.
JUST ONCE I would like to see SUN make an announcement that requires no follow up. None of this "stay tuned business". Enough is Enough. All sun stories now get blacklisted.
So SUN, to you I say: SHUT UP and Deliver. Yes that means you too Mr. Ponytail Schwartz.
Do they think we are retarded and statements of "Shiny Object....Shiny Object" will keep our attention forever?
Are there any normal people at SUN who are not mortified anytime their Fearless Leaders play their stupid games?
Unfortunately, you are almost definitely wrong. Private modification of software, private copies of software and even running software (copying it to RAM) may come under copyright's legal purview.
Especialy where private means more than just myself.
The difference between OSI and FSF is that FSF invokes morality.
This is the same difference as those who say "People should be free because then their economy will prosper" and those who say "People should be free because we are all equal and they have a god given right to it".
Without RMS kook-aid there would be no collection of "open source" success stories outside of BSD and apache and the OSI would not exist. Perhaps you should place an order for a jar or two of that.
Everyone knows that "Open Source" is expressly designed to gloss over Stallman's philosophy that drives him on his mission to assure software users have the freedoms he believes they should.
He has proven himself uncorruptable in this regard. Who else has?
Yes, we all know that people who carry the flag of Open Source are all aware of the neccessary politics involved. Those who claimed otherwise started changing their tunes real quick SCO.
In short, BSD is the epitome of open source. All copyleft is in truth based strictly on a belief and desire in software freedom such as that expressed by RMS.
RMS is therefore the father of Free Software, Copyleft which helps perpetuate it, and the leader of those who will not compromise on this stance.
What is OSI? It is a way to show companies how to mix in some copyleft licensing to bsd open source licensing so that they can now create a semi-open commons which will benefit them no less than their competitors, while still giving them a product they can sell at a nice margin.
Sun and others are still tinkering with the exact recipe.
Again the point is made that OSI exist only because of RMS's innovations driven by his moral stance.
In plain speaking, for many who believe in Free Software, this translates to supping with the enemy. Showing us the tidbits you collect from their tables during the meal, while nice and good does not change that.
OSI does do many other things such as lobbying and advocacy. However, the source is always examined in this case, and due to OSI's corporate ties, one can easily determine that there is perceived taint here.
In terms of trust, everybody knows where they would place that first.
And in fact, since it is bad for just about everybody except microsoft's accounting department, if DHS were really doing their job, they would sue microsoft to enjoin them from a path that would render huge amounts of windows machines in the USA vulnerable to "cyber-terrorism", not to mention the DDOS capability of the internationaly pwned windows machines. I expect the FBI should be interested also. Would make it impossible for them to trace "bad guys". Not to mention the justice department may have some issues with the inevitable results. Expect "my computer was pwned!" defense to be quite common as people plead to the lesser charge of running windows unlicensed instead of hosting gigs of warez. Expect corporate networks to refuse access from unlicensed copies also "think NAC".
Because having even more unpatched zombie windoze machines will be even worse for the net, microsoft's network, microsoft's reputation, AND microsoft's customers.
Its like the neighbor who refuses to clean the trash from his sidewalk, since "he didnt put it there". Its bad neighborly and expect to see them get their reputation further trashed.
Frankly, I suspect that Microsoft couldnt fix their reputation even if they tried, of which no evidence has been seen, let alone by what they are doing now.
I think that service providers should start denying all internet access to "pirated" windows machines, because pretty soon, by definition they will be pwned.
Microsoft would be very gratefull to these ISP's.
I expect china to also outlaw windows or "pirated" copies.
And we will start finding out just how many people used "pirated" versions of windows when we start measuring web site statistics for OS. Expect GNU/linux and mac osx to make heavy inroads in the next few years should things play out like this.